st?" he queried
presently.

"What of it?" Burgess asked.

"Nothing, only the man huddlin' down round the fire makin' that smoke
way down where it's cold and dark, that's the man who--say, Professor!"

Old Bond looked up appealingly, and the pitiful face touched Burgess'
heart.

"What is it, Saxon? Be frank now, but be fair, too. Sooner or later,
this thing must be run down. Fenneben will do it himself, anyhow, as
soon as he's well enough."

"Professor, I have asked you twice if you'd be good to Dennie--"

"Yes, yes; you always come back to that. Anybody would be good to her,
and she's a capable girl who does n't need anybody's care, anyhow. Now,
go on."

"I will"--it seemed an heroic resolve--"I asked this for Dennie, because
my own life is never safe."

"So you have said. Why not?" Burgess insisted. There was no way to evade
the question now.

"That's my own business--just a little longer," Bond answered slowly.
"One thing more; I want your promise not to tell what I say--yet awhile.
It can't hurt anyone to keep still, and it will help some folks."

"Oh, I'll help you all I can." Burgess's kindly patience now was
strangely unlike the aristocratic, resentful man to whom old Bond Saxon
had appealed one stormy October night.

"I'm a failure, Professor. I've spoiled my life by my infernal weak will
and appetite for whisky. I know it as well as you do. But I'm not meant
for a bad man." There was unspeakable pathos in Saxon's face and words.

"Nobody would call you bad. You are a lovable man when you--keep
straight," Burgess declared cordially.

"I graduated from the university back in the sixties," Bond went on.

"You!" Burgess exclaimed.

"Yes, I'm one of your alumni brothers from Harvard. It takes more 'n a
college diploma to make a man sometimes, although this would mighty soon
get to be a cheap, destructible nation, if we should pull the colleges
out of it. The boys I've seen Sunrise make into men does an old man's
heart good to think about! But there's more than book-learning in a
Master's Degree. There must be MASTERY in it. I never got farther 'n
an A.B., partly because Nature made me easy going, but mostly because
whisky ruined me. I finally came to Kansas. I'd have had tremens long
ago but for that. But even here a man's got to keep the law inside, or
no human law can prevent his making a beast of himself."

Saxon paused, and the professor waited.

"The man that sets the cussed trap for me is